#can and does apply to obi-wan! it's valid to write him that way

[cypanache]

Hi! What are some of your favorite Obidala headcanons?

So true confession time? I'm terrible with head canons. Or at least I feel like I am? Not sure. But if I reframe it as 'commonalities' in how I approach the characters in my writing, I can give you a few. Hopefully this is sort of what you're looking for ...

There was something between them first -- So far at least almost every Obidala story I've constructed, whether published or not, has an element where Obi-Wan and Padme met/connected first. Exactly what that connection looks likes varies greatly, but it's pretty universally there in my story telling and often a pivotal element of how they relate to each other. The only exception to this might be the Manny AU. I'm pretty sure they didn't meet in that one ... but stay tuned. (Interestingly this doesn't apply to my obianidala stuff ... don't know why)

They love Anakin -- This feels sort of obvious, but I'm still going to say it because it's so universal to how I write them and how they relate to each other. Much like point one the nature and character of that love and its impact on them is highly variable depending on the piece, but its so integral to both their characters and their relationship that "placing Anakin' in the piece is almost always on the first things I do when I'm spinning a story in my head.

They Fight -- My obidala can go at it. They're not mean, but they are principled and passionate and do not always see eye to eye. The result being ... they fight. Sometimes its just light sparring, but they can and do tear great gaping chunks out of each other because in many ways they see each other as strong enough to take it and trust each other enough to be honest in a way I don't think either quite manages with Anakin. But sometimes that honesty is ... explosive.

Their sexuality is flexible -- I rarely use labels in my writing or my tagging partly because I don't feel comfortable that I will use them correctly, but moreso because its not important enough to the overarching storyline to feel like a valid or necessary tag. But in my head both Obi-Wan and Padme are people who can and do become sexually attracted to the personality/spirit of an individual first and their physical qualities second. And that translates to having no strong preference as to gender when choosing a partner. I tend to write Padme as being more physically passionate and driven by a desire for that kind of intimacy and connection, where my Obi-Wan is a little more 'neutral'. He can and does enjoy sex, he's had it, and will have a one night stand if he feels a connection, or 'companionable' sex with a good friend (I have a scene upcoming in Trap with Quinlan that speaks to that as part of their history). But he's really not driven by it. He won't seek sex out for the sake of sex alone. What turns him on is the emotional connection. So the man could go months or even years and simply not have sex just because he had other things to do and there was really no opportunity he found that interesting.

Padme has undiagnosed ADHD -- So this is a very closely held personal head canon that I hesitate to share, but the more I work with Padme the more I feel like it fits. She's capable of amazing things. Principled and indefatigable are words that were coined for her. And yet some of her choices seem to make no sense. That impulsivity combined with her almost hyper fixation on Anakin and saving him. Then there's that incredible duality in RotS where she can feel competent and controlled and commanding in her professional world and yet at the slightest indication of Anakin's displeasure in her home life she seeks to soothe. That rejection sensitivity, along with that inability to truly understand/face that the 'someday' they've been trying to put off has come due ... that all feels very true to my lived experience/struggles, and while I'll probably never put it central to a story, those elements and character traits certainly inform some of how I write her.

Bail Organa is the #1 obidala shipper -- that man is such a stan ... really one of the very first things I wrote for Trap was to take the exchange between Obi-Wan and Bail in the cave during OWK and spin it with the idea that Bail knew about him and Padme ... it actually works pretty well. But seriously, if Bail shows up in my stories, I can guarantee you he will be pro-obidala

[intermundia]

Hello! Thank you for all of your metas and analyses, they're always really intelligent and I greatly enjoy reading them. In that vein—if you're willing—I have a question for you. Where did the 'Obi-Wan hates going to the Healers' trope come from? I know the 'character X dislikes medical' trope is pretty common across most fandoms (or, I think it is? I migrated from the MCU, it's a staple there), but do you have any guesses as to why it's so common with Obi-Wan, specifically? Thanks!

it's always fraught to some degree for me to discuss other people's characterizations in public, their obi-wan especially, because it's a controversial topic and it’s really important to me that everyone's participation in fandom is welcome and their art is valid. my opinions about the importance of canon only apply to my own work, not to anyone else's, and i’m not making value judgements, just trying to describe trends.

the fact that you are familiar with the trope from MCU is unsurprising to me. i think that there is a fandom archetype of the self-sacrificing workaholic who will push through any pain and ignores their own comfort because they might not believe they deserve care. this leads to a great hurt/comfort dynamic and is useful for whump stories, and so is kind of universally applicable to all ships. people see obi-wan as someone who plausibly fits into that role as someone who puts duty first and they want to take care of him, make him accept care and reassurance, and more power to them for that. i think that’s the reason the trope is so strong, people love these characters and hate to see them hurt, and identify with their pain. to have someone demand that they accept comfort can be very psychologically satisfying for the reader.

the reason that i don't use the trope much myself is that i haven't found any canon evidence of it, and aligning my version of him with canon is important to me. my memory is good, but not perfect, so i always welcome if people have sources, but afaik while obi-wan is, as stover describes him, 'modest, centered, and kind,' he is not irrational or prone to self-harm. he's willing to die or be hurt to help people, but there's nothing to suggest that he doesn't accept help when he needs it. i can't remember anything off the top of my head other than fanfic that describes him that way.

we do see him hurt a lot, the clone wars loves to whump him, and we never see the aftermath of that, because the show isn't about trauma or healing, it's about plot. people are free to read whatever they want into the empty space! using his opinion about medical is a good way to characterize him in a story. to me, a quick check if something is wrong is the more pragmatic and useful thing for him to do, so he would do that and then head to the bridge to get to work. that's my general interpretation of who he is. the only story where i had him grab bacta and hide in his cabin was when he was processing a lot of psychological trauma after zygerria and didn’t want to do it in front of other people, so i do get and use it where it feels right!

[gffa]

How much of our real world concepts and rules can we apply on gffa? Issues like mental illness, therapy, age are they same in gffa? Does the worldbuidling of gffa cover these subjects? Ahsoka at 14 fighting is argued as Jedi using child soldiers but Padme at 14 being a Queen and ruling a planet is accepted. Anakin didn't get therapy, but does mental therapy exist as a concept in gffa? Is it okay to simply accept the gffa's in-universe machinations, treat it as separate from our world concepts?

Hi!  This is a really fascinating subject that I enjoy a lot, because a lot of elements go into consideration for these things–writers often having an imperfect understanding of the concepts they’re drawing on for influence, the lack of desire to be a perfect match to realism rather than the thematic elements they prefer, even whether or not you follow narrative intention or instead go by Death of the Author.Let’s take physics as an example–if we try to jam real world physics into the world of Star Wars, we’re going to be sorely disappointed because the creators don’t have a perfect understanding of physics (NO WAY A LIGHTSABER WOULD EVER WORK IRL, THERE IS NO SOUND IN SPACE, etc.) but also that that’s not the point.  They’re writing a story to be entertaining, to follow themes, to have exciting and dramatic moments.  Those laser swords work because realistic physics is a far, far secondary concern to, “Does this look iconic and will make our property unique and sell a shitload of toys?”Does this stop people from yelling about how SWORDS DON’T WORK THAT WAY!!!! in “this expert analyzes the fight scenes of Star Wars” on YouTube?  No, it does not.  And I can yell back, “THEY’RE LASER CHAINSAWS, OF COURSE THEY’RE ALL BOUNCY, ALSO FUCK PHYSICS THAT’S WAY LESS IMPORTANT THAN THEMATIC INTEGRITY.” and then we’re at an impasse!  It depends on which way you want to go, if you want to aim for a Doylist or a Watsonian view on the stories you’re consuming.I want to establish that clearly–one of fandom’s biggest draws is that you get to choose whether you want to abide by Word of God or if you want to embrace Death of the Author (though, in that case, I don’t think you get to claim narrative intention, if the authors specifically say otherwise), that both are valid options.  Beyond this point, we’re going with Word of God because I think that’s the aim of this ask, but I want to be very clear that this is not a judgment of people who subscribe to Death of the Author!Within a fictional world, there is such a thing as narrative intention and narrative structure.  What I mean by this is what you mention with Ahsoka and Padme–the idea that the Jedi use “child soldiers” isn’t really backed up by the canon narrative and is directly contradicted by Padme being an elected Queen of her entire planet and being trained for combat, by the same age, which is treated as awesome.  We see Ahsoka being awesome all the time, there’s no narrative arc where she has to deal with being a “child soldier”.  The Resistance also uses younger people of that age and we’re not meant to think that the Resistance is a horrible, evil organization for that, either.I think realism has its place, because the authors and creators are influenced by realism, but if you can’t back up an assertation with reliable in-universe evidence and the narrative supporting it, then you’re not meant to think that that’s what’s going on.  Star Wars is a fictional space fairy tale, one with laser swords and psychic powers and spaceships, it’s not meant to be 100% realistic.  Not in physics or in psychology!  Not only is it okay to accept the GFFA’s in-universe machinations on their own merits and treat them as separate from real world concepts, I think that’s the best path to understanding the narrative!That said, that is a separate issue from potential criticism of a narrative for including the tropes it does–ie, if we want to, we can criticize the narrative for putting for the idea that having a 14 year old Queen (who many mistake for being much, much older because of the way she’s costumed and made up) is totally cool and that it puts pressure on people of that age to be more world-ready than they should be, but saying that the GFFA intends for us to find this horrifying and that the people around Padme are super judgmental and right about this–or Ahsoka fighting in a war or the Rebellion and the Resistance doing the same–is not accurate.  Because it’s not backed up in-universe by reliable narrators reacting the way they would if such concepts were intentional.It gets further more complicated when we start assuming things that make utter sense to us, but aren’t necessarily intended.  For example, Anakin Skywalker’s various diagnoses by different people (sometimes professional, sometimes not) can be used to say, “This is why his actions are understandable!” or “This is why his actions are inexcusable!”  You can map anxiety disorders behaviors onto him just as much as you can map domestic abuse/IPV behaviors onto him.  You can say, “He should have had therapy!” and I can say, “An actual professional paralleled the Jedi teachings as analogous to therapy, Anakin WAS going to therapy.  He did not want it.”  How much of these were intentional by the narrative and the authors?  We have to look at the characters in-universe’s reactions–ones we know to be reliable, ie, not villains who have an axe to grind or are shown over and over and over to be lying liars who lie for evil purposes, like Palpatine, like the First Order–and take our cues from there.Examples:  Everything in Dark Lord of the Sith shows us that Anakin cannot own up to his mistakes, that he lets his fear rule him, that he is shown better options and rejects them over and over and over.  (“No, this is all there is.”)  Or, in From a Certain Point of View, Obi-Wan says, (“Anakin became a Jedi Knight,” Obi-Wan interjects, a thread of steel in his voice. “He served valiantly in the Clone Wars. His fall to darkness was more his choice than anyone else’s failure. Yes, I bear some responsibility—and perhaps you do, too—but Anakin had the training and the wisdom to choose a better path. He did not.”)  It’s clear that the narrative is saying, yes, Anakin had access to tools that would help him make better choices, but he still rejected them.Ultimately, no fan is obligated to take one path or another, Realism vs Thematic Intentions, Word of God vs Death of the Author, Doylist vs Watsonian, or even a mix of the two, all are our choices.  But when talking about narrative intention, real world influences can be important, but they are inspirations, not a direct, literal correlation.  George Lucas did research on history, so the prequels follow certain structures, but his understanding of them was often imperfect, so I draw on his comments and what’s in the actual canon and books like Star Wars: Propaganda to make my conclusions, because that’s what was built into the foundations of the story.For me, I find it far more satisfying an experience, because my understanding of the story then tends to align a lot with the intentions of it.  Intentions are only as important as any given person wants them to be (Death of the Author is a perfectly valid approach to stories, if you want!), but that is still what was going into the story and I think it’s important to recognize that trying to cram hyper-realistic concepts into a story that wasn’t intended to have them isn’t always going to work out very well, because they aren’t narratively intended.  Padme’s not intended to be a child soldier, trying to cram that into her story can be an interesting thing to explore, but it’s not going to be reflected in the rest of her story.  Same for Ahsoka and the Resistance and the Rebellion, same for the realistic physics of lightsabers.